Prairie Berry winery visit with Fran and Fred Hammer – 9/10/2016

We spent Saturday evening with Fran and Fred Hammer. Fran is a high school classmate of ours who happened to be traveling with her husband in an RV through South Dakota at the same time as us.

We wanted to do dinner and catch up on each other’s travels to date. Kevin and I wanted to return to Prairie Berry Winery for more wine tasting and food and Fran and Fred were game for the choice.

Prairie Berry is an award winning South Dakota winery and is known as the Home of Red Ass Rhubarb wine (for real). They feature a variety of wines from dry to sweet. Not only is their wine good, but their food is delicious as well. There was no room at the wine bars when we first entered the winery, so we all ordered our food, and each a glass of wine and sat out on the patio. It was a clear, beautiful evening. We enjoyed each other’s company and between the four of us, we shared our travel stories and tips on what to see and where to go. After sharing the cheese platter and our gourmet pizzas, we ventured back into the winery for some tasting.

Our server Ed, was an older, retired gentleman who happened to be a full time RVer and a work-camper at the winery. Now this certainly has my attention as working in a winery, especially as a tasting server, is a job I would love to do! So after a few questions to Ed about his work-camping experiences and then “lots” of stories about his adventures and life, we finally got down to the best part, the wine tasting. Ed was quite the entertainer which made for an interesting and fun tasting experience and end to the evening with our friends Fran and Fred.